Whether or not you like the products it creates, Apple's philosophy builds in the best of intentions. When speaking to Business Week, Craig Federighi (Apple's VP of software engineering) stated their overarching goal in a way that ought to serve as the backbone for most good work: "new is easy, right is hard."

Casey Newton at the Verge reports:

While skeptics look at the new iPhones and sing their annual chorus of "meh," Cook and his deputies have come together to offer a full-throated defense of their products' steady evolution. "You've got a sense about perhaps not what we are building, but the way we approach problems as a group," Ive says in USA Today. "About how we go back again and again until something is just right." Federighi puts it more succinctly, offering up an unofficial tagline for the modest improvements of the iPhone 5S: "New is easy," Federighi tells Businessweek. "Right is hard."

Opinions of the latest iPhones aside, Federighi's simplified philosophy makes a lot of sense. We can all find new ideas exciting, but when you get them wrong they fall flat and fail to last. When we approach our own projects and ideas, we shouldn't focus so much on new. Very little is new, but just seems that way. Good, better, and right—those things require struggle and ultimately make for better goals.